IssueTracker

I would like to add that I think is basically an essential feature of the API. I cannot complete the application I am trying to write without it.

While I can understand (to some extent) why the API doesn't allow deleting of photos, modification of albums (old and new) should be safe enough.

A month and a half and not even a response - no rejection, no comment, nothing?

Thanks for filing this feature request.

At the moment the API has been designed around the upload/connect/share use cases as outlined in our documentation: https://developers.google.com/photos/ 

Please 'star' this issue to indicate your interest in this functionality, this will help us prioritize this feature in the future.

how many stars do you normally need to bump the priority up so that this reaches some production pipeline?

Code a new endpoint: POST https://photoslibrary.googleapis.com/v1/mediaItems:batchOrganize,
to which developer sends an album id and an array of mediaItem ids, etc.

Considering that backup & sync is fast and automatic, the use-case cited at <jf...@google.com>'s comment  (dated Jul 30 2018) is pretty-much obsolete.
Why would User want to explicitly upload photos when backup & sync does it automatically, with no effort?

The use-case this issue requests is much more valuable, both to developers and end-users; and it is easy to implement:
it's practically the same as POST https://photoslibrary.googleapis.com/v1/mediaItems:batchCreate

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This is pretty much required since there is also no way to add the same media to two albums when using mediaItems:batchCreate.

+1 on this please. More generally, an UpdateMedia endpoint is desirable to amend titles, assign albums, re-order within albums etc.

This has to be required.. there must be some way to add a photo to multiple albums.  The idea of batchCreate being the only way to add to albums is pretty silly.

I need this feature.  I have a Google Hub and it can only show photos from a single album.  I'd like to write an app that will randomly add photos from my entire library to a "Hub" album, and then periodically rotate out and in new photos to allow the Hub to display from the entire library rather than just a limited set, as albums are limited to 2000 photos.

I have a great Android app idea that I would love to implement, but lack of this feature is holding me back.  I don't want to have to resort to screen scraping...

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btw how to 'star' an issue?

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I just implemented a downloader for my photos/albums and it was pretty smooth. Intended to write an uploader and came across this. This is a significant limitation.

Why is this item suddenly labelled "new" as of January 13, 2019?
It has been in the queue since June, 2018.
Does this mean it starts all over again?

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When we could get updates on this feature request?

this issue now has 63 stars.  a search on other "Feature Request" types for this componentid shows that issues with as low as 5 stars are getting "Assigned" over this feature, and only to a single email address at Google.  is it a complexity problem on the backend?  any feedback is appreciated.

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My use case for this feature is that I wanted to use the Cloud Vision API to organize the photos into albums based on the features in the photos.

It is unreasonable that there is no such function.
Why did you close picasa api?

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Is there a need to further explain use cases? As noted in the Aug 27, 2018 comment, regardless of the original intent and use-cases, the automatic and transparent upload of photos has rendered that obsolete. Why explicitly break photos out of the automatic, seamless upload process just to put them in a specific album? It makes no sense. My specific use case: I have a Blink video camera, which records various animals (deer, beaver, racoons, etc.) in our backyard. I want to be able to share interesting videos from this camera to family members without having to give them the credentials for the blink account (which would also give them access to cameras inside the home). It's very easy to just click a "download" button in the Blink app, which pulls down a copy of the video, and Google Photos offered to start backing them up as soon as I did that the first time. I said yes, of course, and planned to have a shared album that I could share with other people...problem solved!

But currently I have to add videos to that shared album manually...like an animal. Ugh. I reviewed the API, and saw that I could poll and check for new photos within a timeframe...great! One of the attributes I can see about a new photo is the filename, and the Blink camera autogenerates a filename that is easy identifiable; all I would have to do is check for that pattern, and if it's in the new filelist, add that (already uploaded and sync'd!) video to the shared album. Except, of course...I can't do that.

So instead of just sticking a cron job on one of my VPNs to check for new videos once an hour, it looks like I currently need to *write an Android app* to do this. I'll have to take the Blink video directory *out* of automatic upload, then write an app for the sole purpose of doing what Google Photos already does for me, with the added ability to put the videos in an album. This does not seem like a sensible way to the finish line, although at this point I am seriously considering it (which kind of blows my mind).

Does this make sense at all? This is but one of many use-cases that could be *drastically* simplified if we could just put a media item (photo or video) that is *already* in Photos (via the automagic of Google Photos upload) into a new album!

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Thanks for the feedback and the requests, everyone! We appreciate your patience!

The latest release of the Google Photos Library API includes two new calls: `albums.batchAddMediaItems` and `albums.batchRemoveMediaItems`. With these calls you can add (and remove) media items that you have uploaded to albums that your application has created.
You can find out more in the release notes (https://developers.google.com/photos/library/support/release-notes) and the updated "manage albums" developer guide (https://developers.google.com/photos/library/guides/manage-albums).

These new APIs are good in their own right, however they don't address the core issue outlined here.
I believe the majority of people here want to organize media items *not* uploaded by their app, i.e. uploaded by the photos app on the phone.

I'm sure many will be disappointed, but for clarity the docs clearly state:
"Note that you can only add media items that have been uploaded by your application to albums that your application has created."

I don't agree with marking this issue as fixed. If user gave app persmission to modify data (ALL DATA) than this should be possible on all photos, not only created in app.

These new calls definitely don't do what most people here are asking for, but for some reason, overall library management seems to be off the table. It seems kind of ironic that the Photos Library API wants us to give up the easy, one-stop uploading provided by the Photos app itself, and instead require each app to handle uploading, etc. on its own. We just want to manage/organize what we already have! It's our library, after all.

This is not just a case of not being what most people want. It is not what was explicitly asked for in the OP:

"... to organize the existing photo library as Albums without having to upload new media.  For example, I have several hundred gigabytes of photos that i don't want to download to re-upload to put into an Album."

The methods provided in the "fix" do not address this problem.

This should be re-opened or Changed to "Won't Fix" (which I suspect is the real case...)

Explain, please, what do those developers (who have been waiting all this time to address the issue)?

I was not lazy and got to the google.photos team and got the answer that this task was included in the roadmap. And now it turns out that this was the wrong information. Perhaps they simply did not hear me or (something "as always" in your Corporation оf Good) -- the added methods in principle already existed before (when adding an album).

Do we need to create a new request and transfer all our stars to it? Don't be evil, please.

While I appreciate the step in the right direction, the new batchAddMediaItems and batchRemoveMediaItems do not meet my needs.  I don't want to upload new photos and create a new set of albums.  Rather, I would like to use those APIs to move existing photos into my existing albums.

Note that I can already list and view the existing photos in my existing albums (even if they weren't uploaded by my app).
https://developers.google.com/photos/library/guides/list#listing-album-contents
https://developers.google.com/photos/library/guides/access-media-items#get-media-item

Why do batchAddMediaItems and batchRemoveMediaItems only allow access to photos and albums created by my app?  Is there a particular security concern here?  If not, it should only take a few minutes for a developer to take out these silly security checks.

I too believe that the new APIs don't fix this issue since the overwhelming majority of photos are auto-uploaded from phones, not by 3rd party apps. If the real reason to not support this is the fear that rogue apps will abuse user approved permissions, I wish Google would attempt to address that problem directly rather than implement band-aids like this and call it done. Such a discussion/solution may also affect other pending API requests (e.g. add & delete photos to/from any album, provide location info, provide comments/favorites metadata...).

Additionally - there is no way (or at least I don't see it) to check who created MediaItem (I mean app not user). Album has property 'isWriteable' which can tell me if e.g. I can upload something to it. There is no such thing on MediaItem which means that right now only way to check it is to make a call and see if it fails or not which is not very great....

Ok. If this fixed, i create new one: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/132274769

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how is that mark as fixed as it is stil not possible?!?

"These new APIs are good in their own right, however they don't address the core issue outlined here.
I believe the majority of people here want to organize media items *not* uploaded by their app, i.e. uploaded by the photos app on the phone."

exactly and this is still not possible... these items can only be viewed from API and nothing more :(

I don't know if this is still open, but this it seems kind of pointless that the album id can be passed, but it won't do its purpose if it wasn't created by the same runtime. This was very frustrating to find out.

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Please can this be looked into. If my Mac and my phone are configured to have images uploaded to Google Photos, I should be able to add those photos into albums based on dates, timestamps and GPS locations. The rest of the API allows this. It is just the stupid rule about which application uploaded the photo that is blocking this. This is a limitation that massively reduces the potential functionality of this API. Please remove this restriction.

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This is a massive disappointment to find. I've been uploading security cam screenshots to google photos and just want them to move into an album after a day. The upload app cant upload to a specific album and the photos api can't move them.

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Marking it fixed is almost a showcase of their ignorance. It's Google.

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+1. Crazy this is still not fixed.

+1 please enable this! its ridiculous that its not allowed. i wanted to script a way to delete screenshots from my library (uploaded by the iOS app with no way to disable that)

+1, I want my app to add any photos to an album I created. Limiting to just my app's own photos is too limiting.

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"What the actual fuck?"  +1 likewise spent an hour or so brushing up on Python and planned to have a "This Month In History" album that my Chromecast With Google TV would use as a screensaver - but that has failed!

how do we go about making this a live issue again, as the 'fixed' status probably means nothing will ever happen?

I found the following related feature requests that are still open.  Just to be sure, I voted for all of them.

Organize existing MediaItems (photos/videos) into albums using Photos Library API
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/132274769

Feature Request: add ability to add a photo to an album
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/129024140

Allow to change metadata of any mediaItem
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/228336553

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At the very least, make this restriction absolutely clear in the docs. I've overlooked this and spent way to long building a script to organize my fotos only to realize that it won't work.

totally agree!

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